Using Countdown Mechanics

D&D 5e Organized Play

Sounds like WotC has some pretty cool stuff in store for players who take part in D&D organized play this year. From epic mega-battles, to persistent stats and certificates for your characters in one big ongoing story. All the details are here.

Question

@KiloGex asks: How would you run an assassination mission in D&D/Pathfinder? 4E-esque skills challenge, more narrative, or other?

Hi again! At last! For the last few months I have not been able to make any entries in the HASTE comments section…….but I HAVE been listening. And I always enjoy it. I could’t work out what the glitch was but I recently reinstated my whole Google Chrome set up and…..voila! I’m back!

The discussion on assassination missions hit the nail on the head. Maximise narrative and tension. Minimise arbitrary rolls.

Hi, I have some comments on the Organized Play info.
I’ve been playing in the RPGA (3E & 4E D&D) for about 10 years, but I know very little about the Pathfinder Society. I’ll mostly speak to the RPGA.

We see a decent number of military members in our games, and that’s probably because we are about 45 minutes away from an Army base.
They like the RPGA because they move often to other bases, and they can continue play with the same character after they move. It’s a way for them to get as close as possible to the normalcy of a home game.
They can stop into almost any gaming store and get into a gaming table quickly.

I played in the RPGA because I could only find people playing other games than D&D or D&D 2E, but I wanted to try out 3E. The RPGA was a way for me to do this. I met some great people, and started playing with them in a home game.

It’s a pretty good way to get started in the hobby, and a good way to meet new players and get some fresh blood back into your gaming group.

Organized play comes with some issues; since everyone plays the same modules (sometimes more than once), it feels like a player can’t influence the future of the game (like what they do doesn’t matter).
This is why the “you effect the world” angle is stressed so much.

IMO, a players ability to influence the future of an RPGA campaign doesn’t work out all the time. There are so many people playing that your gaming table can’t really steer the complete plot (like you do in a home game). It’s sort of like voting in an election; you vote for your guy, but, often, you know who will win regardless.

Another benefit of Organized Play is that it help out us Lazy DMs. We don’t have to create all the adventures and stat blocks. Really smart people write those adventures, and stat out all the monsters.
All that’s left is to draw maps, pick out minis, and read the module.

I just wanted to give a perspective of someone who has played in Organized Play before.
I’ve met some awesome friends, seen tears shed at finales, and learned how to be a better player and GM. (I’ve also seen the opposite of all of these, so it’s just like any community–you take the good with the bad.)

I’m glad to come on the show to talk about Organized Play and why it exists. While for some it may be that a convention is their only play, that isn’t why it exists. Hundreds of thousands of gamers play organized play at a mix of convention, home, and store. It wasn’t hard in the Living Greyhawk gamers to play about an average of 8-16 hours per week of organized play!

In a nutshell, organized play exists for gamers as a way to create community around gaming and for RPG companies as a way to connect with gamers and encourage play. There are many types of organized play, but what often happens is that it can be hard to have a central narrative when you have so many players. Take the Lord of the Rings plot. Now imagine that this is divided into 5 years of play, with 50 adventures a year. At any one of those adventures, anything can happen at a specific table. The easiest thing to do is assume that there is a default outcome (the actual Lord of the Rings plot). BUT, that is a disconnect for all the tables that did something else. And, indeed, that ends up being a big drawback compare to a home campaign which should always reflect the actions of the players. With a lot of effort, adventures can be written to account for these variances and to deliberately seed many expected variances and choices so that the outcomes can factor into the story. For example, if you escaped the elves by getting in barrels (your favorite!), you gain enmity with the elves for future adventures and they react accordingly. If instead you reached a tentative accord with the elves, then they will behave differently in the future… and maybe there are a ton more orcs on the lookout for you.

Again, there are many benefits provided by organized play. I invite you guys to check AL out and learn about them!

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